The present invention relates generally to apparatus for obtaining a sample from a material conveying conduit system, particularly those handling toxic or other hazardous or dangerous materials which must be contained and cannot be manually handled.
In various material processing, treating and like operations wherein a material is conveyed through a conduit system, it is often desirable or necessary to monitor periodically the composition or other characteristics of the material. For this purpose, a wide variety of devices and apparatus are known and available for withdrawing a sample of the material from the conduit system. Typically, the collection device or apparatus extends through a wall of the conduit system and is selectively openable and closeable to collect a sample quantity of the conveyed material and to withdraw the sample to a separable container outside the conduit system in which the sample may be transported to a laboratory or other location for testing or analysis or otherwise handled as considered necessary or desirable. Representative examples of such apparatus are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,558,387; 3,109,306; 3,555,910; and 4,147,062.
For the most part, such apparatus and devices are entirely satisfactory for many sampling applications. However, such apparatus and devices are generally considered undesirable for safety reasons in obtaining and handling samples taken from systems conveying toxic or other hazardous or dangerous materials such as radioactive waste slurries, toxic chemicals and gases, and the like. In such applications, the required transferring of the material from the collector to a container and the manual handling and transportation of the container create unacceptably high risks of accidental breakage, loss or other escape or release of the material which may result in contamination or injury of the personnel involved. One known sampling apparatus has been proposed utilizing an enclosed conveying system for transporting a sample from a collecting device to a testing or analysis device without manual handling, such apparatus being disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,362,228. However, such apparatus is not believed to have achieved any significant degree of acceptability and use and, in any event, is not particularly designed and intended for applications handling hazardous materials.
The present invention provides an improved sampling apparatus generally of the latter above-described type which is particularly provided with a simple and reliable construction well adapted and designed for obtaining samples from conveying systems handling hazardous materials and delivering the samples to a remote deposit location without any required manual handling of the samples.